Offensive Films

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by Mikita Brottman

Type

Essays

Subject

Genre > Horror

Keywords

horror, violence

Publishing date

2005

Publisher

Vanderbilt University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 216 pages
6 x 9 inches (15.5 x 23 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-8265-1491-X
978-0-8265-1491-2

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Book Presentation:
Brottman offers up a study of movies so offensive, some are practically unwatchable. From the ever-popular Faces of Death movies to purported snuff films, from classic B-movies such as The Tingler, to more popular but no less controversial films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Brottman takes a wide-eyed look at movies most folks watch only through parted fingers.

While most critics have been quick to dismiss such films as mere shock-fests (if they even bother to talk about them at all), Brottman argues that these movies tell us quite a bit about who we are as a society, what makes us anxious, and what taboos we truly believe cannot be crossed. Part anthropology, part psychoanalysis, Offensive Films vivisects these movies in order to figure out just what about them is so offensive, obscene, or bizarre. In the end, Brottman proves that these films, shunned from the cinematic canon, work on us in sophisticated ways we often choose to remain unaware of.

About the Author:
Mikita Brottman is Professor in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is the author of Car Crash Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) and Funny Peculiar: Gershon Legman and the Psychopathology of Humor (Analytic Press, 2004), among other books.

Press Reviews:
Consistently witty and intelligent, informed by a cheerful nihilism. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
--Science Fiction Studies

For those called to be diagnostic morticians of a sick culture. Not recommended for the faint.
--Choice

See the publisher website: Vanderbilt University Press